This Week:
- Week Summary
- New Projects
- Firefox 3
- User Contributions
In 9 days, the GPL v3 will have been out for a whole year, and our group will also hit its anniversary. This week we have passed 3000 GPL v3/LGPL v3/AGPL v3 projects, 3009 to be exact. Individually, the GPL v3 count is at 2648 GPL v3 projects, up 56 projects from last week. The AGPL v3 count is at 113 AGPL v3 projects, up 4 projects, and the LGPL v3 count remains at 251 LGPL v3 projects. It won't be much longer until the GPL v3 alone surpasses 3000 projects. Next week we will celebrate an early birthday for the GPL v3 and this group and recap on the significant events that have passed over the year.
New project conversions this week include:
- Simple Server: A set of C++ classes to easily create a simple customizable multi-threaded TCP/UDP server application.
- Gaia Ajax Widets: Gaia Ajax Widgets is an Ajax library for ASP.NET and Mono. It is a "high-level library", meaning it abstracts away JavaScript 100%, and the developer doesn't have to write anything other than his favorite .
- multicronftp: Multi Cron FTP it's java utility used to execute ftp tasks over a set of hosts or schedule a single script in a cron-like fashion.
Firefox 3
This past Tuesday, Mozilla released the highly anticipated version 3 of their popular internet browser, Firefox. The release of Firefox, the second most popular browser on the market (only to Microsoft's Internet Explorer), started off with a bang, recording 8 million downloads over the first 24 hours. It is presumed to be a world record for "most software downloaded in a day", currently being reviewed by the Guinness Book of World Records. [1] Created only 4 years ago by a small community of developers, Mozilla Firefox is now challenging Microsoft's Internet Explorer's throne to the browser market, making an even broader statement of the emerging prevalence of open source software in today's market.
Along with a number of bug fixes, Firefox 3 boasts an improved and faster interface, a few design tweaks and a number of new innovations, most notably the search by title function. This feature allows the user to search for previously visited sites by not only the website address, but also the title of the site making it easier for users to find previously viewed sites. A criticism of Firefox in its older releases is that they could hog memory over time, eventually forcing a browser restart. Firefox 3 needs a little less memory and doesn't keep nibbling away at your computer's resources over the day.[2]Due to the open source nature of the browser, a key advantage of Firefox remains to be the availability of over 5000 add-ons on their site.
Although, the new features of Firefox 3 appear impressive, questions about the browser's security are somewhat left unanswered. Just hours after the release, security tool vendor TippingPoint was notified of a "critical vulnerability" affecting Firefox 3.0 and 2.0. The flaw could enable an attacker to run malicious code on a computer, the company said. Like other browser-based vulnerabilities, a person would have to click on a link in an e-mail or visit a malicious Web page to get infected.[3] Although these issues may be somewhat alarming, it is a common misconception that because of the availability of its code as open source software, it is less secure than browsers like Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Currently, Firefox garners 18.41% of the browser market, still significantly less than Internet Explorer's 73.75%, the most popular browser in the world.[4] Although there is still a long way to go for Firefox to compete for the top spot, the fact that it has only been 4 years since Firefox's conception, as well as Microsoft's decided advantage by packaging Internet Explorer with Windows, makes Firefox's popularity and usage statistics that much more impressive. More so than the usage statistics, what was perhaps the most impressive aspect of Firefox 3's release was the coverage it received not only by tech and internet media, but by the major media outlets as well.
The progression and speed at which Firefox has been developing is a testament to the strength and benefits of the open source software market. Perhaps the most recognizable open source software name next to Linux, Firefox's importance in defining the future of software development will continue to be written by developers around the world. Thanks Mozilla, and keep up the good work.
-Edwin Pahk
References:
1 Associated Press. "Firefox 3: 8 Million Downloads in one day". The Dallas Morning News. 18 June 2008 <http://www.dallasnews.com
2 Pegoraro, Rob. "Building a Better Browser: Firefox Keeps Innovating". The Washington Post. 19 June 2008 <http://www.washingtonpost.com
3Gonsalves, Antone. "Firefox 3 Bugs Reported". InformationWeek. 19 June 2008 <http://www.informationweek.com
4 "Browser Market Share". May 2008 <http://marketshare.hitslink
Thanks for the Continued Support and Contributions
Our database is partly maintained by our team of researchers as well by the contributions that are received from the community. Here is a submission we received last week through email:
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Sino
"http://www.austlii.edu.au
I noticed it had been released under GPLv3 after I downloaded the sources and
checked the licence.
This software has been developed and used for production purposes by Austlii
(http://www.austlii.edu.au/) for a number of years, and they ought to be
congratulated for making it available now under the GPL.
-Jason White"
Sino (short for "size is no object") is a high performance free text search engine written and maintained by Andrew Mowbray. It was originally written in 1995 and has been mainly used to provide production level search facilities for most of the Legal Information Institutes that form part of the Free Access to Law Movement.
Newest Release:
Sino Source (3.1.17)
Much Appreciated,
Palamida R&D Group
Notable Mention
Palamida actively takes submissions from visitors on updates on new GPL v3/LGPL 3 projects. We are amazed at the number of submissions we have gotten to date, but even more so, we are incredibly grateful to the almost 100 core contributors who have devoted their time and resources at helping us provide up-to-date information.
The Research Group (rdgroup@palamida.com)
- Ernest Park
- Antony Tran
- Edwin Pahk
- Kevin Howard
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The GPL3 project, sponsored by Palamida, Inc (http://palamida.com/ ), is an effort to make reliable publicly available information regarding GPLv3 license usage and adoption in new projects. The work published on both sites listed below is licensed This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License .
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Palamida was launched in 2003 after its founders learned first-hand what happens when companies don't have full visibility into the code base of their software applications based on Open Source Software. Their experiences inspired them to create a solution to streamline the process of identifying, tracking and managing the mix of unknown and undocumented Open Source that comprises a growing percentage of today's software applications. Palamida is the industry's first application security solution targeting today's widespread use of Open Source Software. It uses component-level analysis to quickly identify and track undocumented code and associated security vulnerabilities as well as intellectual property and compliance issues and allows development organizations to cost-effectively manage and secure mission critical applications and products.
For more information about FOSS management solutions, go to http://palamida.com/, or send a note to http://www.blogger.com/sales@palamida.com. Please mention the GPL3 site when you reach out to Palamida.
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